Tuesday, July 30, 2013

I continue to watch in amazement as the Republican Party continues to destroy itself. I think this political cartoon captures an essential truth about Obamacare. The Reps actually seem to think that if Obamacare fails the Republicans will triumph. I guess they think no one will notice that it failed largely because of Republican sabotage. Whether it would have failed on its own or not becomes moot because Republican fingerprints are all over the refusal to implement the law and do whatever they can to make sure it doesn't work. I really don't know if there will be a viable Republican Party in 10 years.

Tuesday, July 16, 2013

It's pretty disturbing to me that a 16 year old kid can be shot to death going home from a convenience store in the early evening and no one is held responsible for that killing.Prior to the verdict I decided that I would accept the jury's decision, and I do. They were at the trial and I wasn't. If we don't accept the trial system we lose a foundation of civilization. So, I accept that it was not proven beyond a reasonable doubt that Zimmerman did not act in self defense. I guess the trial ended up being about the fight that ended with a gunshot. The point of a trial is that the person being accused is supposed to be looked at by the jury as innocent unless proven beyond a reasonable doubt to be guilty. He said it was self defense and it wasn't proven otherwise, so...But, what about the context? Why did the older man have a gun? Why was he following Martin? How crazy is it to have armed vigilante neighborhood watch people walking around through neighborhoods carrying firearms?Isn't that a recipe for disaster? Aren't the police specially selected and trained in order to qualify handling guns when dealing with the public? Doesn't Zimmerman prove that armed civilians who volunteer for for these kinds of roles just the opposite of the police? Aren't they un-vetted and untrained? Aren't they just disasters just waiting to happen? Shouldn't neighborhood watch people be barred from carrying weapons? How about they watch, and report to the police, and let those who are specially trained and seasoned do the rest?Just a terrible tragedy, and my heart goes out to every black parent in the land. It was a fair trial, but it is a sad chapter in America.

Friday, July 12, 2013

Putting up a fence tells U S Hispanics that the U S sees them as not valuable, but as leeches rather than productive people. The words about illegal vs legal are insignificant when compared to a fence with guns.

Talk radio is killing the Republican Party which may never recover from this nasty obsession.

I used to be a Republican but I can no longer identify with the contempt demonstrated by the fence, the active sabotage of the safety net in the name of smaller government (shrinking the caring parts of the government), and tyrannical control over women's reproductive lives. Plus, of course, the disgusting display of Republicans in Congress doing anything and everything they can to make sure the government doesn't work, the filibuster of presidential nominees being the current focus. They have become the party that refuses to compromise, which is another way of saying they have become the party that refuses to join in the cooperative enterprise of democratic government, which is another way of saying that they are the party that refuses to govern, which is another way of saying that they are hoping that the day can come when they can simply rule by fiat.

Talk radio extremists are leading the Republicans into a very clearly understood brand that plays only to an ever shrinking base. Too bad. It used to be a good party.

Wednesday, July 3, 2013

The question as to whether Edward Snowden is a hero or a
villain for his massive leak of the National Security Agency’s terrorist
hunting programs is interesting in itself.But, to me, the leaks illuminate a different point – that those on the
ideological edges see the world in absolute terms without reference to
context.

To 4th Amendment absolutists, the government’s
use of powerful computer programs to track communications of Americans is a de
facto violation of the Constitution. In
addition, some on the far right wing see Obama as a tyrant, just as some on the
far left saw Bush as a tyrant. Both presidents
authorized powerful computers to find and stop terrorists. To the 4th amendment absolutists,
it’s a straight up violation of the Constitution. To the right wingers it’s a straight up
imposition of tyranny.

But what about the context?

The context is that the government needs to find and stop
terrorist attacks on America. These
powerful computer methods help do that. The
problem is that finding the terrorists is an exercise in finding needles in very
large haystacks, and these powerful computer methods find the terrorists. There is an attempt by the government to use big data mining to locate suspects and then go to the FISA courts to get
authorization to take it to the next step and actually eavesdrop and
investigate individuals. In overarching theory,
this seems legitimate to me. Have there
been abuses along the way? I suppose so, but perfection is unattainable, it
seems to me. Should the government give
this approach a lot of oversight? Sure. Carry on. But I don’t condemn the program as a violation
of the 4th amendment, nor do I see it as tyrannical oppression of
political opposition.

Context helps explain a lot about the IRS scandals as
well. The Supreme Court decided, rather
foolishly it seems to me, that it was possible for very political organizations
to avoid taxes and avoid revealing donors as long as they met certain
criteria. Frankly, meeting these criteria is most
likely just a shuck and jive. So, the IRS
decided to dig in and find out more.
This all happened during a time frame (context) where there is an
explosion of Tea Party political organizations applying to get relief. Had this happened in the ‘60s there would
have been an explosion of “progressive” and “peoples’ something or others” or
other identifiers of left wing political organizations applying for
exemption. To see this as the left wing
Obama administration suppressing the right wing Tea Party ignores the context,
or so it seems to me. Paranoia is its
own context, unfortunately, and the political extremes seem to live in contexts of paranoia – brings in lots of donations of time and money.

As to Snowden, he is clearly The Hero in his own mind, and
I’m sure he expects to go down in history as a noble person. But, I think he made the fundamental mistake
that absolutists make – he ignored the context of his actions.

By exposing terrorist hunting methods, he told the
terrorists what to cease doing, and, as I understand it, the terrorists are
modifying their behavior accordingly. I
don’t think I want to thank Mr. Snowden for helping the terrorists avoid
detection.

By fleeing to Hong Kong and then Russia, he ended up giving
up pretty much all that he knows and has access to to the Chinese and to the
Russians. Mark Theissen, conservative
Washington Post editorialist, points out that he had four laptops stuffed with
highly classified secrets with him, and it is obvious that both the Chinese and
the Russians have captured all of that info, either having been given it by
Snowden, or by taking the computers from Snowden, or by hacking into his computers
against his will. This could be
amazingly damaging to the government and the people of the United States.

Absolutists can only see their own obsessions, and cannot
see the contexts.

Is killing wrong? To
the absolutist Quakers it always is, but in the context of self-defense surely
it is not. Is failure to protect an
embassy wrong? Sure, but in the context
of limited military resources or human mistakes perhaps it is at least
understandable. Is going after a
reporter as a co-conspirator to publish leaks wrong? Sure,
but in the context of trying to keep covert activities covert it is again somewhat understandable. Is getting weapons into
the hands of drug cartels in Mexico wrong?
Sure, but the context is an effort to track them and fight the drug
wars, and that is at least understandable.
Is killing fetuses wrong? In the
context of a woman having power and control over her own reproductive life, I
think it is not. Is going to war in Iraq
based on false information wrong? Sure,
but I believe the context was one of being mistaken rather than lying. Was abandoning habeus corpus by Lincoln during the Civil War wrong? Not in the context of the U.S. Civil War where this was a necessary temporary need to protect democracy itself.

I am trying to look at the world in other than absolutist
terms. I am trying to look to the larger
contexts to better understand what people are doing. But, I am also trying very hard to disregard
the paranoid contexts that the extremes on both the right and the left live
in. That is a path to a life of perpetual righteousness and dismay.

As for Snowden, is he a hero or a villain? I think he is a fool - fooled by his own sense
of grandiosity and nobility into handing over extremely vital and secret
information to terrorists dedicated to killing Americans and Westerners, and to
China, and to Russia. There is nothing
noble about the outcome of his self-identified heroic acts.

I think Snowden’s heroism is the heroism of an adolescent
mind which can only see the world in black or white absolutist terms. But doesn’t that kind of explain today’s politics
in general? Glenn Beck, please meet
Glenn Greenwald at the adolescent absolutist café and share drinks of paranoid
accusation and righteousness.
Unfortunately, they have turned America into that adolescent absolutist
café. I’m kind of sick of it.

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About Me

I am a boomer who has been both a left winger and a right winger and am seeking to add some soothing energy to the inflamed polarizations of today's rhetoric. However, in the age of extremist Republicanism I see the best way to soothe the waters is to oppose the inflammations from the Right, and the Left as needed.